To recap, WordPress (www.wordpress.org) is an open source application which gives home users the ability to quickly and easily create [...]]]> Last week we were looking in to the powerful WordPress editor.  Those that missed my last article can view a copy either at the Herald Express’s website (www.thisissouthdevon.co.uk) or on my own online blog (www.computerarticles.co.uk).

To recap, WordPress (www.wordpress.org) is an open source application which gives home users the ability to quickly and easily create an online blog, a term used to describe a website which provides an ongoing chronicle of information.  After covering the basics last week we’ll now start to uncover the more advanced features that really make WordPress stand out from the crowd.

The term ‘plug-in’ is used to describe a small piece of software written by either the WordPress authors or a third party which provide additional features not found on a standard installation.  If a blogger finds that WordPress doesn’t cater for a particular requirement of his then in many cases a plug-in can be used to extend the functionality of the software quickly and easily.

To give you an idea, I’ve listed a couple of plug-ins that I find particularly useful:

Akismet – You will soon find that your blog gets a lot of spam comments, usually by automated systems trying to advertise male medical products.  Akismet checks comments in your blog against an online database in order to automatically remove any that it deems as looking like spam.

All in One SEO Pack – This provides a number of Search Engine Optimisations in order to make your blog more appealing to search engines such as Google.  Although Search Engine Optimisation is an entire science in itself, this simple plug-in will hopefully help to push you further up the results table.

Google XML Sitemaps – Creates a single file detailing every page on your site.  You can then request that Google download and analyse this file on a regular basis thereby helping them to improve the freshness and visibility of your pages in their search engine.

Sociable – Allows users to automatically add a link to a specific post on their favourite social bookmarking site, for example Facebook, Digg or Twitter.

Statpress – Analyses visitors to your site and allows you to see a number of reports including daily views, pages most visited and search terms used to find your site.  You can even use it to find out more detailed information about your readers such as the Operating Systems they use and their geographic location.

The ability to keep the software up to date it one of the things I admire most about WordPress; once you have performed the initial installation you will be informed whenever you log in to the control panel if a particular plug-in or indeed the entire installation needs updating.  Should you find that any component is out of date then it only takes one click for the appropriate files to be downloaded and installed on your web server automatically.

Such ease of use means that it doesn’t take a lot to ensure that you always have the most up to date version of the software installed as well as providing protection by allowing you to easily install any security patches as and when they are released.

It [...]]]> Over the past few months I’ve mentioned the Mozilla Firefox browser several times because it is a worthy alternative to Internet Explorer not least because as well as being free it also is in my opinion a faster and more stable browser than the Microsoft equivalent.

It seems only natural then that I should digress and discuss the e-mail client available from the same people so it would compliment Firefox perfectly. I would probably pitch Mozilla Thunderbird as a viable alternative to Outlook Express as to be honest the product isn’t feature rich enough to compete on a level playing field with the expensive Microsoft Outlook 2003. Such a comment isn’t an insult to the programmers as I think it would be unreasonable to expect a free 5.8mb download to compete against a program that is dozens of times its size and comes as part of an expensive office suite.

The main advantage to Thunderbird over Outlook Express is that it contains a powerful anti-spam filter that is integrated into the program. This feature alone will be enough to convince a large number of people to make the switch as every week my inbox is filled with people asking my advice on how to get a usually poor anti-spam program installed on their machine. When you consider that many anti-spam solutions cost money then it could be a cheaper option to change your entire e-mail program to the free Mozilla Thunderbird as opposed to trying to get anti spam integration with your existing one.

As many of you will know the Mozilla suite of programs are ‘Open Source’ and this means that anybody can download the original code and improve/add to it with a view of their changes making it into a finished version of the product. One advantage to making programs in this fashion is that often you collect a loyal user base who are happy to spend their time working on improvements. As well as changes to the program itself, these improvements can also be accommodated into Thunderbird as a ‘plug-ins’. Whilst the core version of Thunderbird is relatively small you can then add features that you require via plug ins to add functionality such as the Mozilla calendar or perhaps you’d prefer several new custom tool bars.

The look and feel of Thunderbird is relatively minimalist and easy on the eye but the layout can be largely customized to your own taste or even changed completely by loading up a new ‘skin’ for the program – such skins are often created by other users and available online to download for free.

An especially nice feature that I noticed is the ability to restrict the download of messages over a certain size. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had a good chuckle watching a user on a slow 56k connection be unable to view any of their e-mail as Outlook Express is busy downloading a 50mb file that was sent to them by a relative who has broadband. If the user cancels the download then all that happens is next time they try and download their e-mail is that the entire process starts again from scratch – More often than not they’ll spend 2 hours downloading a rubbish program which is then instantly deleted.

When composing an e-mail Thunderbird has full support for HTML messages as well as the ability to add emoticons (smilies and the like) to messages. Incoming e-mail can be downloaded as either plain text or formatted HTML and the program has the ability to view RSS feeds without any additional software.

Possibly one of the most important features of the program is the import feature. The first time you run Thunderbird it will ask you if you want to import all your messages and settings from another mail client such as Outlook Express. Just say ‘yes’ and the program will quite happily take all the information it needs from your previous mail client before asking you if you then want to make it the default. Once you are happy that Thunderbird is for you then just delete your previous mail client and begin the experience of spam free and speedy e-mail.

A couple of weeks ago I suggested that you download the fantastic Winamp 5 (www.winamp.com) as a possible alternative to Windows Media Player which is a program, although perfectly capable and indeed free, could do with some enhancing. For those of your with your heads thoroughly in the sand I [...]]]>

A couple of weeks ago I suggested that you download the fantastic Winamp 5 (www.winamp.com) as a possible alternative to Windows Media Player which is a program, although perfectly capable and indeed free, could do with some enhancing. For those of your with your heads thoroughly in the sand I should state that the core function of both the programs listed above is to allow you to play media (audio/visual) files on your PC.

What I didn’t realise until a reader Ian McMillan pointed it out to me was quite how many skins were available to customise the program to suit your particular taste. On further inspection I found a vast collection of visualisations and plug-ins which could be downloaded to further enhance this great little program and I thought it would be nice to spend this week introducing some of what is available.

Skins:

Skins are available to completely alter the look of the program; you can make it so that the player looks like an conventional Hi-Fi, an Apple iPod or even just to customise graphics of the player to reflect your favourite band. Essentially nothing is changed with the player as all of it is pretty much skin deep but those of you who like to customise everything they use should find this feature helpful.

Visualisations:

Again, no features as such as added to the player by the addition of visualisations but they do look cool. Sometimes when you like to unwind it is nice to start one of your favourite songs playing and then load up one of the Winamp visualisations so that you can actually see the graphics change with the music that you are listening to. For example, load up the ‘geiss’ visualisation, switch to full screen mode, put on a song and the visualisation will project psychedelic colourful patterns that change in time with the music.

Plug-ins

This is where things start to get a little bit interesting as you can download little programs called ‘plug-ins’ and integrate them into Winamp. At first I assumed that the range was extremely limited but ultimately I was surprised to find the lengths some people had gone to in order to add something to Winamp; most of these programmers are just members of the public doing everything off their own back for no financial reward which makes it even more impressive. Amongst my favourites that I found this evening include a program that ‘listens’ to your music collection to decide what type of music each song is that then arranges them into a little mix where each song follows on nicely from the one that immediately preceded it. There were a few plug-ins to allow you to manually mix MP3’s together much in the same way that a DJ would with two vinyl’s and of course there were a hundred and one plug-ins that allowed you to change the sound of the music as to speed up the tempo, increase the pitch, add additional base, make a standard MP3 into a surround sound MP3 and so on. The list is pretty extensive with plug-ins going as far as to allow you to control your PC’s TV tuner, play new music formats and even to play a few games from within Winamp.